


if i'm far from home

by frutescence



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, Family, Family Drama, Gen, He/They Huan Beifong, Light Angst, Missing Scene, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29438838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frutescence/pseuds/frutescence
Summary: Huan stands awkwardly in the doorway of Baatar’s childhood bedroom, just down the hall from their own, and for a moment, the distance between them feels insurmountable.Huan turns their piercing gaze on him. “Why are you going, Baatar?”[Or: Baatar and Huan have one last conversation the night before Baatar leaves Zaofu.]
Relationships: Baatar Jr. & Huan (Avatar), Baatar Jr./Kuvira (mentioned)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	if i'm far from home

**Author's Note:**

> Huan uses he/they (mainly they/them) pronouns in this fic :)

Baatar flops down tiredly in his desk chair as he looks around at the last vestiges of his childhood bedroom.

When he was younger, Baatar’s room had felt like an endless world of possibilities, like he could create and achieve anything he dared to dream of within the vast expanse of those four walls.

Now, his whole room just seems dull. Devoid of any personality. Baatar had finally torn down the posters he had hung up in his early teens and pulled down the photos with distant friends Baatar had fallen out of touch with along the way. It left only an empty expanse of dark green walls, with sections discolored after years of concealment.

He was glad he did it. Cleaning out his room was the least he could do before he left for Ba Sing Se tomorrow.

His mother had pleaded with him to stay. But he had made his decision, and his mother’s sadness had shifted almost effortlessly into blinding fury directed solely at Kuvira. His mother shot words at Kuvira without faltering, accusing Kuvira of stealing everything she held most dear, including Baatar. Kuvira had met his mother with cold determination, unable to be swayed. It was the irresistible force paradox coming to fruition.

Baatar respected his mother’s choice to stay out of the conflict in the Earth Kingdom. It was undoubtedly the easier option. Zaofu was autonomous and sustained itself solely on the surrounding mines and valleys. The state didn’t require any approval or outsourcing to ensure that its citizens would be protected.

Why take on Ba Sing Se's citizens, who have been suffering under the same oppressive status quo, regime after regime, when a lack of action could preserve Zaofu in all of its glory?

Baatar understood his mother’s desire to stay out of the conflict just as he understood Kuvira’s willingness to go to Ba Sing Se and end it herself.

Baatar startles at three raps on his door. The pattern repeats. A first knock, then a beat, and then two more in quick succession.

Baatar would know that pattern anywhere. It had started as a joke between the three of them.

It couldn’t be Kuvira, who had left their disastrous dinner with his family to finalize plans and finish packing up her apartment before tomorrow. That only left one other person.

“Come in, Huan.”

The door opens slowly, the sound echoing loudly in his room. Huan stands awkwardly in the doorway. Baatar’s younger sibling had always tended to hover on the edge of things, as if they lived under the constant fear of being asked to leave.

Ever since Baatar decided to leave, he hasn’t known what to say to his next-youngest sibling. _Sorry Opal left, and I’m leaving too? Good luck with your next art exhibit? Don’t let Dad talk to you too much about the sustainability flaws in modern architecture?_

None of it could encompass everything he needs to say. Out of his entire family, the only person that might understand his decision was Huan.

Huan looks around expectantly before finally settling on the edge of Baatar’s bed. Huan had been in Baatar’s room a thousand times before. Their rooms were the closest together, with Huan’s just down the hall from his own. Despite their physical proximity, the distance between them feels insurmountable.

“Where did you go after dinner?” Baatar asks.

Kuvira had left dinner first, claiming she had matters to attend to before politely bidding everyone farewell. Huan had slipped out wordlessly a minute later, barely noticed by anyone at the table. They hadn’t returned by the time Wing and Wei finally gave up on punching Baatar in the arm every six seconds after dinner as the three of them said their goodbyes, Baatar pulling both of the twins in good-naturedly for a hug. 

“I was conversing with Kuvira in the garden,” Huan says nonchalantly.

That piques Baatar’s interest. He knew Huan and Kuvira were friends, and the three of them had gone out on countless excursions throughout Zaofu. Those had happened less frequently as Kuvira’s guard schedule became busier until the excursions eventually stopped altogether. “What did she say?”

Huan exhales, pushing some of their hair behind their shoulder. “A combination of the same persuasion she gave Zaofu’s benefactors and guards. I’m sure you’ve heard it.” Huan pointedly doesn’t say _the persuasion she gave you._ It is the closest thing to an acknowledgment of his own choices that Baatar has received so far.

“Ba Sing Se will be reduced to ashes if no one fills the vacuum of power soon,” Huan continues as Baatar runs a finger along the metal _(always metal)_ surface of his desk. “Kuvira has the knowledge and now the resources to do something about it. She feels that the denizens who can end others' suffering have a moral obligation to do so. What good is Zaofu’s utopia if people starve less than a day’s journey beyond the rivers?” Huan picks absentmindedly at a loose thread on Baatar’s bedspread.

They’re Kuvira’s words. They were words she had shouted at him in a whisper as she stormed down a hallway after sitting in on the meeting between his mother, Tenzin, and Raiko. They were words he had heard Kuvira tell her guard friends countless times, words Kuvira had finally uttered at dinner mere hours ago to his mother, who still refused to accept that she was leaving and taking the security force with her.

“Kuvira’s rationale is not misconstrued. Ba Sing Se will have to be rebuilt.” Huan says. “There will be ample opportunity for redevelopment. A desperate need for new infrastructure. Upgraded water systems, sewers, improved power grids. A superior train system that runs on something more efficient than traditional earthbending and improves upon the ancient motors already in place, particularly if Ba Sing Se does not rebuild the walls.” Huan levels him with a knowing look.

“What are you doing here, Huan?” Baatar asks, shuffling some of the papers on his desk that he still had to sort.

Huan turns their piercing gaze on him. “Why are you going, Baatar?”

“What?”

“I mean,” Huan waves a hand around. “I know you have a reason—several, if I had to wager. I’ve heard our mother’s theories at length, of course, but those all orbit around-“ Huan cut off abruptly, and their eyes narrow ever so slightly.

Immediately, Baatar knows that Huan knows about– _whatever_ he and Kuvira have been doing.

Maybe that had been Baatar’s fatal flaw, the first step that led to his departure from Zaofu. Ruining what was quite possibly the most important friendship in his life because he’s been in love with his best friend since he was sixteen.

But three months ago, when visiting the street market in the westernmost dome, he and Kuvira had gotten caught in a sudden torrential downpour. She had grabbed his hand and pulled him along as they made a break for shelter. She stood under a bakery’s overhang in a side alley, wringing the water out of her braid, unable to stifle a laugh as she told him he looked like a drowned snake-rat.

Kuvira had looked at him, in that way she only ever did when she thought he couldn’t see, and pulled him down to kiss him.

Baatar desperately wants them to be _something_ more than friends, whatever that may be. However that may be.

They haven’t had time to put a label on it, and they were out of time in Zaofu.

“Why are you going?” Huan repeats.

Baatar would be remiss to say that Kuvira wasn’t a part of his decision. But he didn’t say yes just for her. Baatar has so many reasons he almost doesn’t know where to begin.

He always knew he would leave Zaofu someday. He had just needed the right opportunity. Stabilizing Ba Sing Se was a chance to help people, to _be_ someone. Become someone outside the shadows of his parents and his siblings. How could he ignore that?

“Everything I’ve ever done has been an attachment of someone else,” Baatar says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “When I couldn’t metalbend like Mom, I started engineering like Dad. Every project I’ve ever undertaken in an official capacity has just been expanding on works he has already created. Why does anything I do matter if it’s just an extension of what Mom and Dad have already done? How am I supposed to find out what exactly it is that I’m capable of if I stay here?”

“The pursuit of individuality,” Huan nods. From anyone else, it would be an insult.

“I have the most extensive portfolio of anyone under the age of 25 in the Earth Kingdom. And I owe so much of that to Dad, and I’m grateful, but,” Baatar searches for the right words. “it’s like you said. Ba Sing Se will have to be rebuilt. I have the skills, knowledge, and with Varrick, the financial capabilities to help make a difference. Do you know that clean water in Ba Sing Se is a privilege?”

Huan hesitates. “I did not.”

Baatar had only been to Ba Sing Se once, but he had been shocked at the revelation. The Queen had spent her days basking in the exorbitance of her riches while most of the city’s water ran brown.

“The technology that we have already developed here? The one that taps the watershed and uses the flow of the rivers to purify it? I can easily adapt it to Ba Sing Se’s water supply. Plus,” Baatar shuffles some papers on his desk, pulling out the one he had been working on earlier. “Some of the trains in Ba Sing Se have mechanical engines. But they have long since been outpaced by technology here and in the United Republic, and the Earth Queen had refused the expenditure to upgrade them.”

He holds the paper up towards Huan, who makes no move towards it. It only irritates Baatar a little. “I already have ideas about how to utilize the magnets that support the metalbending monorail here.” Even beyond Ba Sing Se, he had ideas for lines of the magnet trains that could run across the entire continent.

An entire nation, cut by the sleek metal lines of his own creation.

“Impressive.”

“Is that it?” Baatar prods.

“I don’t want to interrupt your packing,” Huan says, brushing nonexistent dust off their tunic and standing to leave.

“You don’t think it will work,” Baatar says flatly. 

“I didn’t say that,” Huan says, a hint of annoyance creeping into his tone.

“Just because Mom thinks I’m leaving out of sheer spite-“

“Do you remember when Mom sent Kuvira to eradicate those bandits a couple of hours outside of the city?” Huan interrupts, tilting his head slightly. “At the platinum mine?”

“Yes.” Their mother was usually strict about not allowing Zaofu’s guard to leave the city. She had notably only ever made one exception, three years ago when a group of bandits seized control over Zaofu’s primary platinum mine two hours northwest of the city.

It had been Kuvira’s first real mission after becoming Captain of the Guard. The previous captain had died trying to eradicate the bandit hideout and regain control of the mine.

The last group had spent two weeks there, trying to gain any kind of ground with little success. Kuvira and her group had left and returned on the same day, access to the mine restored, and the bandits sufficiently handled. Suyin had applauded Kuvira’s efforts and praised her tenacity and effectiveness.

“What I am saying,” Huan says slowly, emphasizing each syllable, “is that if there is anyone who could overturn centuries of chaos and restore order to Ba Sing Se, it is Kuvira. And as someone who _also_ ,” The annoyance creeps back into Huan’s tone, “has known Kuvira since they were a child, there are far worse people to believe in. Mom views Kuvira’s departure as a personal slight and has decided … to act as Mom does.” Huan’s eyes soften ever so slightly in worry. “Which is unfortunate for Kuvira.”

“Yeah.”

Baatar knows his mother would always welcome him back to Zaofu with open arms and a slap on the wrist for pissing her off, regardless of what she claimed.

He also knows, as well as he knows Zaofu’s elaborate lighting system that he designed and built from scratch, that the same courtesy will not extend to Kuvira. This departure will be her last.

It strikes Baatar that Huan has grown up while he wasn’t paying attention. Baatar doesn’t know when long, lanky Huan closed their height gap from something substantial to only a handful of inches. Maybe it’s because Huan doesn’t walk around scared and half-hunched over anymore.

Baatar feels something dangerously close to pride mixed with sadness surge in his chest.

Baatar wonders if Huan feels like the one left behind, the same way Baatar had always felt. At least until a few weeks ago, whenever he had felt left behind, he still had Opal. Who would Huan have? The twins? Dad? Opal was gone, and he and Kuvira were following suit.

Baatar and Huan used to joke that they were the two disappointments of the family. The nonbending eldest and the metalbender that refused to fight. Both intrinsic disappointments to the Beifong legacy.

Baatar had still tried to impress his parents, of course. Baatar had thrown himself into science and engineering, giving up every part of himself to become the person his parents wanted him to be. It took him too long to realize that he would never meet their expectations.

Baatar had dedicated his entire life to pleasing his parents, and where had that gotten him?

He was still the one piece that didn’t fit.

And Huan, small, non-threatening Huan, barely coming up to Mom’s waist at eight years old, had told her, _actually, I don’t want to fight_. She had acquiesced accordingly, and she had never asked them again. She had left them to figure out who they wanted to be and how they wanted to use metalbending. 

Huan looks at him for a moment, and the realization that this will be the last time he will see Huan for a long time snaps at Baatar like a band. It propels him forward, and Baatar wraps both his arms around his smaller, younger sibling in a hug.

It’s an uncharacteristic display of affection between the two of them. Baatar has no idea when the last time he hugged his sibling was.

“I love you,” Baatar says, holding Huan just the slightest bit tighter. Because Kuvira had warned him about how dangerous it would be, because Baatar knows he should have said it more throughout his life, because Baatar can’t help but wish he had told Opal, too, before she left.

“An ardent display of emotion,” Huan says, rolling their eyes even as they pull Baatar closer. “I love you too. Stay safe.”

“Only if you do the same.”

They separate after a minute, and Baatar misses Huan instantly. “I guess I’ll leave you to your things.” Huan turns, walking towards the door. “I expect you to write. I’ll know if Kuvira does it for you.”

“Of course,” Baatar feels something burn at the back of his eyes, and he pulls off his glasses to wipe them on the ends of his tunic.

“Baatar?” Huan calls out from impossibly far away.

Baatar’s head jerks up sharply, and he slips his glasses back on his face. It’s the first time Huan has ever called him anything but Junior.

Huan’s hand lingers on the doorknob. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Baatar nods, swallowing the lump in his throat. “I hope you do, too.”

Huan closes the door behind him, and the sound reverberates loudly in Baatar’s empty room.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! the title is from “Hey Brother” by Avicii. 
> 
> normalize telling your siblings and your friends that you love them! normalizing hugging your siblings and your friends (after the pandemic)! I think about all the friends I haven’t been able to hug in a year and my brother that I haven't seen in a year and a half and I wish I could go back in time and hold on tighter. 
> 
> as always, come find me on tumblr: http://frutescence.tumblr.com


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